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Rh accuse her of wanting in love for the people because she scouted the proposed matches. But what are the reasons she gave her father for this dislike? Why, antipathy for those very bourgeois failings of which this eminent historian accuses her. She will not marry a rich tradesman because, forsooth, she has observed that the only way of making money in trade is by selling dear what has been bought cheap, "by overcharging customers and beating down the poor workman. I should never be able to descend to such practices," she told Phlipon, "nor to respect a man who made them his daily occupations."

The next suitor that presented himself belonged to a different class; he was a promising young doctor from Provence, ambitious of rising in his profession, and looking out for a wife with some fortune. The preliminaries of this match had literally been all settled before Manon knew a word of the matter. As it is not customary in France for young men to visit at a house where there are young ladies, the girl was one day taken by her parents, as if casually—a shower of rain being the ostensible excuse—to the house of a certain lady, a distant relative, where they were hospitably entertained. In the meanwhile, Dr. Gardanne also dropped in, as if by accident. "The first impression was not enchanting," Manon wrote to her friend. "A man, above middle height, in wig and doctor's gown, dark, coarse-featured, with small eyes, glittering under bushy black eye-brows, and an imperious air. However, he grew animated in conversation, did ample justice to the sweetmeats," which he cracked in talking, and, with a gallantry smacking of the school, said to the young lady that he was very fond of sweets, to which the latter, not without a smile and a blush,